New Jersey Ex-Sheriff Fights Civil Forfeiture Abuse

Forfeiture Laws in Many States Are Anti-Citizen, Anti-Freedom

New Jersey Ex-Sheriff Fights Civil Forfeiture Abuse

Here is a news announcement about an exciting legal attack being made against a terrible New Jersey law.

Policing & Prosecuting for Profit?

Washington, D.C. — New Jerseys civil forfeiture law dangerously transforms law enforcement priorities from fair and impartial administration of justice, into the pursuit of property and profit. How? New Jersey prosecutors and police are entitled to keep the money and property confiscated from individuals through the states civil forfeiture law, thus giving them a direct financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture efforts.

And New Jersey is not alone. Forfeiture laws at the federal level and in many states permit law enforcement agencies to profit directly from forfeiture laws. But an ongoing civil forfeiture case could put an end to this alarming practice in New Jersey and throughout the nation.

“Law enforcements responsibility should be to enforce the law fairly, not to engage in legalized bounty hunting,” said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm litigating the New Jersey case. “Unfortunately, New Jerseys civil forfeiture law perverts law enforcements priorities by encouraging police and prosecutors to seize as much property as possible. This practice violates the Constitution and it must be stopped.”

Civil forfeiture laws, like New Jerseys, represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. This “legal fiction” allows the government, acting under sanction of law enforcement, to seize property and keep the proceeds on the flimsiest of pretenses. Under civil forfeiture, it is not necessary for the government to demonstrate that the propertys owner is guilty of criminal misconduct. Indeed, forfeiture can take place even when criminal charges have never been filed against a property owner. Making matters worse, forfeiture proceedings give the government all the advantages, while all the burdens are placed on property owners to attempt to reclaim ownership of their property.

“Governments at all levels have horribly abused the civil forfeiture power for almost two decades,” Bullock said. “Driving this abuse is the profit incentive that lies at the heart of so many of these laws.”

The battle to eliminate New Jerseys perverse forfeiture incentive scheme is under way in a case entitled State of New Jersey v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird, and it is led by an unlikely crusader, Carol Thomas of Millville in Southern New Jersey. Her case arose in 1999 when Thomass then 17-year old son used her 1990 Ford Thunderbird to sell marijuana to an undercover officer. He was arrested, eventually pleaded guilty to the charge, and faced his punishment. But that did not end the matter. In addition to pursuing the criminal case, the government also pursued Thomass car in a civil forfeiture proceeding even though no drugs were found in the car; she was the sole owner of the car; and she unquestionably was not aware of and did not consent to her son using her car to sell marijuana. No matter. Ironically, at the time of her sons arrest, Thomas was a seven-year veteran officer with the Cumberland County Sheriffs Office. Thomas has subsequently left the sheriffs department and decided to fight abusive forfeiture laws.

New Jersey has one of the broadest civil forfeiture statutes in the country. In most states, forfeiture provisions are tied to specific criminal statutes such as drug or prostitution laws. But New Jerseys forfeiture provisions apply to all “unlawful activity” and “illegal acts” under the New Jersey criminal code. Any criminal activity in New Jersey, except unindictable and minor crimes like disorderly person offenses, can lead to a civil forfeiture proceeding.

The amount of money generated for law enforcement through civil forfeiture is quite significant. Since laws were changed in 1984 at the federal level allowing law enforcement to keep all forfeited property, federal agencies have collected more than $7.3 billion with more than $696 million being collected in fiscal year 1998 alone. And in New Jersey, in a single six-month period between January 1998 and June 1998, the State of New Jersey alone (not including county governments) collected $1.77 million in forfeiture proceeds and distributed the bounty for such things as medical services for the state police ($128,000), “confidential” purposes ($60,000), and the purchase of ten vehicles and other equipment for the criminal investigation wing of the Division of Taxation ($244,967).

Concern about profit-making by law enforcement is a nation-wide issue and even led to changes at the ballot box this year. Due to successful citizen initiatives on Election Day, police and prosecutors in Oregon and Utah can no longer benefit directly from forfeiture proceedings.

“Impartiality in civil and criminal proceedings is a bedrock principle of our justice system and is guaranteed by the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution,” Bullock concluded. “In this case, we seek both to stop New Jersey from taking away Ms. Thomass car and to end the direct profit incentive in New Jerseys law.”

The Institute for Justice is a libertarian public interest law firm. It litigates to secure economic liberty, school choice, private property rights, freedom of speech, and other vital individual liberties, and to restore constitutional limits on the power of government.

We are Hanno Beck, Lindy Davies, Fred Foldvary, Mike O'Mara, Jeff Smith, and assorted volunteers, all dedicated to bringing you the news and views that make a difference in our species struggle to win justice, prosperity, and eco-librium.

5 Responses to New Jersey Ex-Sheriff Fights Civil Forfeiture Abuse

The State of New Jersey recently fined me $100,000 for failing to make repairs to a small 4-family house I own. Are there any recent developments in the law which I can use to defend myself against this excessive penalty?

This NJ Forfeiture Law was challenged and beaten by Attorney Elizabeth Macron in the Monmouth County Court system, I believe. I don’t know if this precedent has spread around the state. Contact the NJ Libertarian Party to get in touch with Liz Macron.

Also John Paff exposed a Somerset County Prosecutor for forfeiture connected graft. You may also contact Mr. Paff via the NJLP. Try starting with njlp.org or paff@pobox.com

I don’t know how old this article is, but I will give my opinion anyway. Several years ago, in Morristown, NJ, a woman was busted for running a brothel out of her home. They FORCED her to sell her home. They took $72,000 from the sale. They took her cars too. I wrote to Senator Torricelli about it. He told me he had 7.2 million people in NJ and just could not get to every subject. I, too, was arrrested in 1996 for running an escort service that went to people’s homes. They did not seize anything except my car. I was not using my home for the service. The penalties for prostitution are too harsh and outdated for a free country. If you know anyone who is looking to repeal the prostitution laws, please let me know. I have much to say about how normal, tax paying citizens are being treated in America, all in the name of justice.

This forfeiture area of the law is out of control and needs to be ENDED. Law enforcement agencies are operating as for-profit businesses, often at the expense of public safety. Some officers are manufacturing crimes (perjury) and planting evidence to justify siezure of property.

I think you are absolutely on target with this predatory practice..I haven’t been a victim (yet), and don’t plan on it..I’m an Oregon resident, and L.E. officials are whining and lobbying to overturn the bans, and get their cash cow back…incidentally, I’m writing an essay on this topic for my comp class…anyways, thank you, thank you, thank you!

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

the policy that the earth’s natural patterns suggests. Use the eco-system’s self-regulating feedback loops as a model. What then needs changing? Basically, the flow of money spent to own or use Earth (both sites and resources) must visit each of us. Our agent, government, exists to collect this natural rent via fees and to disburse the collected revenue via dividends. Doing this, we could forgo taxes on homes and earnings and subsidies of either the needy or the greedy. For more, see our web site, our pamphlet of the title above, or any of our other lit pieces; ask for our literature list.

a study of a phenomenon David Ricardo noted going on two centuries ago. When wine grapes rise to $10,000 a ton from the very best land (last year, cabernet sauvignon commanded an average of $4,021 a ton in the Napa Valley), then vineyard prices soar from $18,000 an acre in the 1980′s to $100,000 an acre five years ago and now for a top pedigree up to $300,000 an acre (The New York Times, April 9, via Wyn Achenbaum). Pricey land does not make wine pricey; spendy wine makes land spendy. While vintners make their wine tasty, nature and society in general – not any lone owner – make land desireable. Steve Kerch of CBS’s MarketWatch (April 5) notes that much of what a home sells for on the open market is a reflection of intangible factors such as what school district the house sits in. The price the builder has to pay for the land also tends to be driven by the same intangibles. Because the value of land comes from society, and because one’s use excludes the rest of society, each user owes all others compensation, and is owed compensation by everyone else. Sharing land’s value, instead of taxing one’s efforts, is the policy of geonomics.

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat – or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off – a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

a study of Earth’s economic worth, of the money we spend on the nature we use, trillions of dollars each year. We spend most to be with our own kind; land value follows population density. Besides nearness to downtowns, we also pay for proximity to good schools, lovely views, soil fertility, etc. These advantages, sellers did not create. So we pay the wrong people for land. Instead, we should pay our neighbors. They generate land’s value and deserve compensation for keeping off ours, as they’d pay us for keeping off theirs. It’s mutual compensation: we’d replace taxes with land dues – a bit like Hong Kong does – and replace subsidies with “rent” dividends to area residents – a bit like Alaska does with oil revenue. Both taxes and subsidies – however fair or not – are costly and distort the prices of the goods taxed and the services subsidized. By replacing them and letting prices become precise, we reveal the real costs of output, the real values of consumers. Then, just by following the bottom line, people can choose to conserve and prosper automatically. A community could start by shifting its property tax off buildings, onto land – a bit like a score of towns in Pennsylvania do; every place that has done it has benefited.

as unfamiliar as geo-economics. The latter is a course some universities offer that combines geography and economics. A UN newsletter, Go Between (57, Apr/May ’96; thanks, Pat Aller), cited an Asian conference on geopolitics and “geoeconomics”. The abbreviated term ‘geonomics” is the name of an institute on Middlebury College campus and of a show on CNBC. Both entities use the neologism to mean “global economics”, in particular world trade. We use geonomics entirely differently, to refer to the money people spend on the nature they use, how letting this flow collect in a few pockets creates class and poverty and assaults upon the environment, and how, on the other hand, sharing this rental flow creates equality, prosperity, and a people/planet harmony. This flow of natural rent, several trillions dollars in the US each year, shapes society and belongs to society.

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat — or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off — a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

a manual. The world did not come without a way for people to prosper, and the planet to heal and stay well; that way is geonomics. Economies are part of the ecosystem. Both generate surpluses and follow self-regulating feedback loops. A cycle like the Law of Supply and Demand is one of the economy’s on/off loops. Our spending for land and resources – things that nobody made and everybody needs – constitutes our society’s surplus. Those profits without production (remember, nobody produced Earth) can become our commonwealth. To share it, we could pay land dues in to the public treasury (wouldn’t oil companies love that?) and get rent dividends back, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Doing so let’s us axe taxes and jettison subsidies. Taxes and subsidies distort price (the DNA of exchange), violate quid pro quo by benefiting the well-connected more than anyone else, reinforce hierarchy of state over citizen, and are costly to administer (you don’t really need so much bureaucracy, do you?). Conversely, land dues motivate people to not waste sites, resources, and the ecosystem while rent dividends motivate people to not waste themselves. Receiving this income supplement – a Citizens Dividend – people can invest in their favorite technology or outgrow being “economan” and shrink their overbearing workweek in order to enjoy more time with family, friends, community, and nature. Then in all that free time, maybe we could figure out just what we are here for.

a neologism for sharing “rent” or “social surplus” – the money we spend on the nature we use. When we buy land, such as the land beneath a home, we typically pay the wrong person – the homeowner. Instead, since land cost us nothing to make and is the common heritage of us all, rather than pay the owner, we should pay ourselves, our neighbors, our community. That is, we should all pay land dues to the public treasury, then our government would pay us land dividends from this collected revenue. It’s similar to the Alaska oil dividend, almost $2,000 last year. Indeed, the annual rental value of land, oil, all other natural resources, including the broadcast spectrum and other government-granted permits such as corporate charters, totals several trillion dollars each year. It’s so much that some could be spent on basic social services, the rest parceled out as a dividend, as Tom Paine suggested, and taxes (except any on natural rents) could be abolished, as Thomas Jefferson suggested. Were we sharing Earth by sharing her worth, territorial disputes would be fewer, less intense, and more resolvable.

more transformation than reform; it’s a step ahead. Harvard economics students this year did petition to change the curriculum, in the wake of the English who caught the dissension from across The Channel. French reformers, who fault conventional economics for conjuring mathematical models of little empirical relevance and being closed to critical and reflective thought, reject this “autism” – or detachment from reality – and dub their offering “post-autistic economics”. Not a bad name, but again, academics define themselves by what they’re not, not by what they are, unlike geonomists. We track rent – the money we spend on the nature we use – and watch it pull all the other economic indicators in its wake. We see economies as part of the ecosystem, similarly following natural patterns and able to self-regulate more so than allowed, once we quit distorting prices. To align people and planet, we’d replace taxes and subsidies with recovering and sharing rents.

of interest to Dave Lakhani, President Bold Approach (Mar 8) and Matt Ozga (Jan 29): “I write for the Washington Square News, the student run newspaper out of New York University. Geonomics seems like it has great significance, especially in this area. When was geonomics developed, and by whom?”
About 1982 I began. Two years later, Chilean Dr Manfred Max-Neef offered the term geonomics for Earth-friendly economics. In the mid-80s, a millionaire founded a Geonomics Institute on Middlebury College campus in Vermont re global trade. In the 1990s, CNBC cablecast a show, Geonomics, on world trade as it benefits world traders. My version of geonomics draws heavily from the American Henry George who wrote Progress & Poverty (1879) and won the mayoralty of New York but was denied his victory by Tammany Hall (1886). He in turn got lots from Brits David Ricardo, Adam Smith, and the French physiocrats of the 1700s. My version differs by focusing not on taxation but on the flow of rents for sites, resources, sinks, and government-granted privileges. Forgoing these trillions, we instead tax and subsidize, making waste cheap and sustainability expensive. To quit distorting price, replace taxes with “land dues” and replace subsidies with a Citizens Dividend.
Matt: “This idea of sharing rents sounds, if not explicitly socialist, at least at odds with some capitalist values (only the strong survive & prosper, etc). Is it fair to say that geonomics has some basis in socialist theory?”
A closer descriptor would be Christian. Beyond ethics into praxis, Alaska shares oil rent with residents, and they’re more libertarian than socialist. While individuals provide labor and capital, no one provides land while society generates its value. Rent is not private property but public property. Sharing Rent is predistribution, sharing it before an elite or state has a chance to get and misspend it, like a public REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) paying dividends to its stakeholders – a perfectly capitalist model. What we should leave untaxed are our sales, salaries, and structures, things we do produce.